Oil Leak 149 Dolphins Face Lethal Injection

This week’s North Star headline  “Dolphins Face Lethal Injection” – this follows up on the CFPA oil spill response plan which contains details of how, in the event of dolphins being stranded and being unable to be refloated, that they will face euthanasia  – it’s a well written article, go buy the paper and read it for yourself.  We thought it worth highlighting the quote from the Port:

“Every power-driven vessel entering the Cromarty Firth carries fuel or oil which most use for propulsion. As a result, the Port’s regulators (MCA) demand that we have an oil spill contingency plan in place for managing any release of oil into the waters of the Cromarty Firth. This document has been written in accordance with the Merchant Shipping (Oil Pollution Preparedness Response and Co-opertion Convention) Regulations 1998 and forms part of the port’s major incident plan.”

Oh dear  – this really shows the major flaws in the Port’s understanding of what they are obliged to do. Firstly – they are 17 years out of date with the legislation they quote to the media – the correct legislation is  “The Merchant Shipping (Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation Convention) (Amendment) Regulations 2015”. It does not specify that a Port needs to have an oil spill response plan because there are ships sailing through it waters (as the Port described to the North Star) – it is related primarily the production or handling of crude oil – the explanatory note says:

“The 1998 Regulations make provision for certain facilities in the United Kingdom’s internal waters, territorial sea and continental shelf to have an oil pollution emergency plan. The amendments effected by these Regulations apply the requirement to have an oil pollution emergency plan to non-production installations in the territorial sea and the continental shelf and apply further requirements to installations and their connected infrastructure which are carrying out offshore oil and gas operations, including well operations, in the territorial sea and the continental shelf, but not in internal waters.

These requirements include the circumstances in which a review of the plan must be carried out and to extra obligations relating to the maintenance and availability of relevant equipment and expertise.”

So, essentially, the reason there is an oil spill response plan in place is because of the oil transfers conducted at Nigg – this plan was subsequently reviewed to include the STS anchorages, just before the last application was submitted in 2015. Therefore if there was no oil being transferred their would be no need to make plans to kill dolphins. Undertaking STS at sea makes it more likely that something could go wrong and that dolphins will need to be killed. It’s not just about an oil spill – acoustic disturbance is being increasingly linked to cetacean strandings – we maintain that carrying out STS operations in the dolphin feeding and breeding grounds will result in a significant increase in underwater noise, increasing the risk of stranding, even if there is no major incident. Once a cetacean is stranded it’s weight tends to crush it’s internal organs with euthanasia being the only option.

Are you outraged by this? You should be. We consider this to be completely unacceptable – there is no need to create this added risk. There is a general election coming up – ask your candidate what they will do about this, ask what they will do about STS!